The key thing to know about Martin Luther, I think, is that every event of his life — like every event in yours and mine — was part of the vining growth plan of ups and downs God had devised for him. God frightened him, pushed him, wound him round the Word. As with Noah and Hezekiah and Jonah and others, many of the downturns of Luther’s life happened toward the end, when you’d think he’d be past all that badness, past his humanness, a completely godly man, producing the fullest and most mellow fruit. But it’s God’s plan, not ours, after all, and we are not his equal. As Job points out, “Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!” — no one except God, of course, who can do the impossible and did it with me and goes around doing it all the time.
— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 42-43